Inside the Future: How PopMech Predicted the Next 110 Years

PM has never been shy about forecasting the future, though we've had a few misses to go along with our hits. Here, PopMech Editor-in-Chief Jim Meigs explains why we decided to use the magazine's 110th anniversary to predict the breakthroughs of the next 110 years, and reveals the brain trust that helped us do it.

Almost every day somebody posts the following on Twitter or Facebook: "In 1949, forecasting the relentless march of science, Popular Mechanics said, 'Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.'"

It is one of those quotations—often plucked from online lists of similar nuggets—that people like to circulate as a pleasant reminder of how much smarter they are than those who lived before them.

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The actual quotation, from the March 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics, goes like this: "Where a calculator like ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1½ tons."

It reads a bit differently in context, no? Written at the time when computers were still huge mechanical/electrical contraptions, the article provided a pretty solid overview of the infant technology. Of course, what the article did not anticipate were two of the most pivotal inventions in human history: the transistor, which came into widespread use in the mid-1950s, and the integrated circuit, or microchip, which intensified the march toward miniaturization a decade later. The first fully transistorized computer, the IBM 608, hit the market in late 1957.

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It weighed 1.2 tons.

And therein lies the dilemma for anyone who dares speculate about the future. Even if you're accurate in the near term—and PM's 1949 story was a respectable piece of prognostication—a prediction can begin to look naive or ridiculous when viewed a generation or two later. But we don't let that stop us. As a magazine about science and engineering, it's our job to explain how technologies just now coming into view might shape the future.

In preparing this 110th anniversary issue of Popular Mechanics, I've spent a lot of time leafing through our archives. It's pretty inspiring to see how well the magazine anticipated crucial turning points in technology—the impact of the automobile, the rise of mass aviation, the space program. In a 1932 article, Winston Churchill predicted a combination of telephone and television that sounds a lot like today's Internet. And when the Internet era finally did dawn, PM devoted a 1994 cover story to this new "Information Superhighway," calling it "the greatest social revolution since the automobile." Yep, that sounds about right.

One of my favorite articles was written by science writer Waldemar Kaempffert and published in 1950. Entitled "Miracles You'll See in the Next Fifty Years," the piece showed remarkable prescience, predicting the interstate highway system, automated factories, weather-forecasting supercomputers, and medical imaging devices similar to modern CAT scans. But Kaempffert's misses were as interesting as his hits. He envisioned a future in which "rich people in a hurry" would fly in 1000-mile-per-hour rocket planes, while ordinary folks would commute in the "family helicopter."

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Sorry to disappoint you, dear readers, but we're still waiting on those. Here's the problem: Just because something is possible does not mean it is inevitable. Building a supersonic passenger jet (though not a rocket) became feasible in the late 20th century—and the Concorde really did cruise at Mach 2, or more than 1300 mph. But the high-speed fuel guzzler never made money, and it was finally pulled from service in 2003. Similarly, those personal helicopters (the subject of much hopeful conjecture in PM over the years) would be simple enough to build. But there is no simple way to fit millions of new aircraft into our urban skies—and the very idea injects new terror into the phrase "learner's permit."

One of the most fascinating things in the Kaempffert article is his depiction of domestic life circa 2000: Homes are built of metal and plastic; dishes, sheets, and clothing are all disposable; and, to clean up, the homemaker "simply turns the hose on everything." Even food would be synthesized from sawdust and wood chips and delivered to the home in frozen blocks.

It was a logical expectation. Midcentury America quickly embraced novelties such as polyester clothing, frozen TV dinners, and labor-saving dishwashers. Why wouldn't such trends continue indefinitely? Well, it turns out that while we all appreciate convenience, we also like a good home-cooked meal once in a while. Most Americans still walk on wood floors, wear cotton and wool clothing, and cook food that their great-grandparents would find quite familiar. One of the biggest challenges in forecasting the future isn't understanding technology, it's understanding people—and people don't have an unlimited appetite for change.

Perhaps the trickiest part of making predictions is getting the timing right. Some advances are slowed by social inertia or economic impracticality. Others suddenly leap ahead as a result of a technological breakthrough such as the microchip.

In making the 110 predictions in this special issue, we tried to balance our deep-rooted techno-optimism with some hardheaded skepticism. We turned to scores of experts—scientists, engineers, and many longtime PM contributors and consultants—to help us sketch the rough shape of the next century. We canvassed our experts about the nature of future changes and when key breakthroughs might occur. How did we do? There's only one way to know for sure: Check back with us in 110 years.

Meet the PM Brain Trust

It takes a lot of brainpower to map out the future. To make sure we had an abundant supply, we assembled a team of experts—fondly known as the PM Brain Trust—to help us with this story. In addition to completing a 41-question survey, they shared their comments. In the following pages, you'll find 15 of their predictions. Before we move on, let us thank them each by name.